EVEN on a steamy late June afternoon, a cool East River breeze floats along the 630-foot walkway known as the Hall of Fame for Great Americans.As usual, this array of 98 busts and plaques on the campus of what is now Bronx Community College is entirely deserted – just as it was 35 years ago, when I first visited what was once one of the most famous sites in America.At a time when America, celebrating its 223rd birthday today, is besotted with halls of fame for everything from accounting to fresh-water fishing, it is truly disappointing that this landmark site has disappeared from the national consciousness.Even some of those who have vaguely heard of the austere open-air promenade would be astonished to learn that membership in this very first hall of fame – the term was coined by its creator – was considered America’s highest national honor. The Hall of Fame for Great Americans lived up to its name: It was our great pantheon, a celebration of men and women whose achievement as Americans significantly changed their nation and their world for the better.Surprisingly, the hall was considered highly controversial when first launched by Henry Mitchell McCracken, chancellor of NYU, in 1901. The founding fathers, after all, despised the notion of aristocracy, and refused to follow the British custom of nobility and peerage.But McCracken believed America needed a shrine to its heroes, to its authors, statesmen, scientists, jurists, teachers and soldiers. His project, financed by the daughter of notorious financier Jay Gould, caught on immediately. It helped heal the still-festering wounds of the Civil War and Reconstruction – over the years, Ulysses S. Grant would be installed opposite Stonewall Jackson and next to Robert E. Lee, who looks across into the eyes of David G. Farragut.More importantly, it was the first real acknowledgment that Americans no longer needed to turn to Europe for inspiration and achievement. America was ready to lead on its own – and, though its native born and immigrants alike, it had the people to do it.As Richard Rubin wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in 1997, the Hall of Fame for Great Americans “promised, for the first time, to launch Americans into the orbit of universal immortality . . . . For a time, the term ‘Hall of Famer’ carried greater cachet than ‘Nobel laureate.'”To ensure that elections to the hall were made with a proper sense of perspective, only those who had been dead for at least 25 years were eligible for consideration.The busts contains names that are familiar – Daniel Webster, George Washington, the Wright Brothers, Washington Irving, Booker T. Washington, Jane Addams, Alexander Graham Bell, Ben Franklin, Susan B. Anthony and Henry David Thoreau – and not so familiar. Even “History Channel” addicts might be hard-pressed to identify Maria Mitchell, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Asa Gray and William Crawford Gorgos.Over the decades, even as America became obsessed with the notion of fame, the nation lost interest in its original Hall of Fame. The promenade, so inspiring in its simplicity but lacking the multi-media technology of modern halls of fame, hasn’t been a tourist attraction for decades. Even more sadly, the very concepts of fame and accomplishment have been trivialized into meaninglessness by a People magazine culture that confuses fame with celebrity and has rendered notoriety indistinguishable from achievement.The last election to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans occurred 1976; its board of trustees disbanded three years later. Although restored last year, it is visited these days mainly by students on class trips – when it is visited at all.But the Hall of Fame for Great Americans does not deserve to be forgotten. It recalls a time, too long gone now, when fame was synonymous only with greatness. It is a testament to national pride, to the accomplishments and achievements that America has inspired over the past 223 years.—You can e-mail comments to efettmann@nypost.com.